Personal life

Medha Patkar was born in Mumbai, Maharashtra to Indu and Vasant Khanolkar, a trade union leader and freedom fighter. She was raised by politically and socially active parents. Her father actively fought in the Indian Independence Movement . Her mother was a member of Swadar, an organization setup to help and assist women suffering difficult circumstances arising out of financial, educational, and health related problems. Her parents' activism played a role in shaping her philosophical views.

Author Jacques Leslie devoted a third of his book, Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), to a portrait of Patkar as she planned to drown herself in rising reservoir waters behind the Sardar Sarovar Dam, whose construction she fought for two decades.